In a searing foreword toBradleyBusch’s andEdwardWatson’s The Science of Learning (2019),which is the celebrated researcher JohnHattie’s “bookof thedecade” (p. xv), Hattiewrites that, in anera of “denialism”, “fake news”, and “post-truth”, “[t[ruth is dead, Facts are passé” and “[r]hetorical effluent, passing the pub test, the smell test are the new norms” (p. xiv). Strong words. What an irony it is that, across the world, as the volume of “evidence” becomes available as never before to serve the “what works” agenda, so the presence of poor-quality research increases commensurately, even exponentially. Together, they bring threats to eclipse the “what matters” agenda by facts, fake, partial, conditional, or true. Not only is there a seamless elision of descriptive and normative statements, “is” and “ought”, but how secure the “is” turns out to be is, itself, open to question (e.g., Didau, 2015; Koutsouris & Norwich, 2018; See, 2018; Wrigley, 2018). It is commonplace to read that policy makers and researchers inhabit different worlds. The dreams and aspirations of educationists are routinely frustrated by policies which are underdetermined by evidence and overdetermined by the political allegiances of their proponents, often in their push for power, all-too-easily squandering, turning their backs on, or “cherrypicking” from, the wealth of evidence available to them, some of which is of dubious quality. For policy makers, decision takers, and, indeed, some researchers as well, the slide from an “is” to an “ought” becomes almost invisible, and the power of the argument is trumped by the positional power of the person making it. The all-too-easy move from description to judgement to prescription, side-stepping the valuative dimension of “evaluation”, is seductive, but it commits a fundamental category error in moving so lightly from an “is” to an “ought”. Just as “what works” must be weighed, challenged, disputed, interrogated, contextualised, and judged, so must the evidence which feeds into it. Judges and judgements are open to scrutiny, interrogation, and challenge, and are then factored into a “what matters” and values-oriented agenda. If research evidence is to be used in the “what works” agenda and policy making, then its users have an ethical and moral obligation to ensure that it clears a high bar of rigour and that the claims made from it are defensible. “Facts” in one context may not travel well to another context; they may be situated rather than universal. This is not an appeal to rampant relativism; rather, it is a recognition that conditionality and contextuality cannot be ignored. Added to this, in thinking about how to use evidence in education must be the ongoing deliberation over not only “what works” but “what matters”, what and whose values and purposes we are serving, and why, what, and whose ethics and morals we are seeking to promote, and why, and what kinds of citizens we want our present and future generations to be, and why. Education is a moral activity, not merely a matter of “what works” in a moral and ethical vacuum. Education is more than a mindless, heartless machine, and, for this, securing rigorous educational research is a moral enterprise, just as what one does with it is a moral activity. One problem with the “what works” agenda is that policy makers have no shortage of “evidence” on which to base their claims. As Hirsch remarked in his address to the California State Board of Education on 10 April 1997 (as cited in Didau 2015):

中文翻译：

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如果只有事实真的是事实

在著名的研究人员约翰·哈蒂（JohnHattie）的《十年之书》（p.xv）的布拉德利·布希（BradleyBusch）和爱德华·沃森（EdwardWatson）的《学习的科学》（The Science of Learning）（2019）一书中，哈蒂写道，在“否认主义”，“虚假新闻”和“后真理”时代， ”，“ [暴饮暴食已过，事实已通过”和“ [r]历史废水，通过pub测试，气味测试是新规范”（第xiv页）。有力的话。具有讽刺意味的是，在全球范围内，前所未有的“证据”数量可用于“有效的”议程，因此，劣质研究的存在也相应地，甚至呈指数增长。它们在一起带来了威胁，使事实，伪造，部分，有条件或真实的事实使“重要”议程黯然失色。不仅无缝地省略了描述性和规范性陈述“是”和“应该”，但事实证明，“存在”的安全性本身就值得商question（例如，Didau，2015年； Koutsouris和Norwich，2018年；参见，2018年； Wrigley，2018年）。经常读到决策者和研究人员居住在不同的世界。教育者的梦想和抱负通常会因政策而受挫，这些政策因证据不足而无法被支持者的政治效忠所压倒，往往是在寻求权力，太容易挥霍，背弃或从中“挑剔” ，他们可获得的大量证据，其中一些证据质量可疑。对于决策者，决策者，乃至某些研究人员而言，从“是”到“应该”的滑移几乎是看不见的，论据的力量被提出观点的人的地位所压倒。从描述到判断再到处方，这太容易了，避开了“评估”的评估维度，是诱人的，但是它在从“是”到“应该”这样的轻描淡写中犯了一个基本的类别错误。正如必须权衡，质疑，质疑，审问，情境化和判断“什么有效”一样，提供给它的证据也必须如此。法官和法官可以接受审查，讯问和挑战，然后将其纳入“重要事项”和以价值为导向的议程中。如果要在“行之有效”的议程和政策制定中使用研究证据，则其使用者有道德和道义上的义务，以确保其消除严格的要求，并保证其主张是可辩护的。一种情况下的“事实”可能无法很好地适用于另一种情况；它们可能位于世界各地，而不是世界各地。这不是对猖re的相对主义的吸引力。而是认识到条件性和上下文性不能忽略。除此之外，在思考如何在教育中使用证据时，不仅要考虑“行之有效”，还要考虑“什么重要”，我们服务的价值和目的以及目的，原因，目的，道德和我们正在努力促进的道德，为什么，以及我们希望我们今世后代成为什么样的公民，为什么。教育是一种道德活动，而不仅仅是在道德和道德真空中的“行之有效”的问题。教育不仅仅是一种无意识的，无情的机器，为此，确保进行严格的教育研究是一项道德的事业，正如人们对其进行的一项道德活动一样。“行之有效”议程的一个问题是，政策制定者不乏将其主张作为依据的“证据”。正如赫希（Hirsch）在1997年4月10日在加利福尼亚州教育委员会的讲话中所说的（在2015年Didau中引用）：